“You hear that, Billy?” Davey shouted toward the swinging doors.
“Got it,” he said from the kitchen, but it was clear from her frown that she couldn’t hear him.
“He’s on it,” I told her with a smile.
“Shifters, with their freaky hearing,” she grumbled.
“You’re just jealous,” I said as I grabbed a couple of glasses to help her finish off the rack.
“Of course, I’m jealous. You think I like being the token human in this place?”
I winked at Doug as Davey lifted the empty crate. “I think you thrive on it.”
“Oh, come on, you know we love you, Davey,” Nolan Blake called from the other end of the bar, where he was finishing his third beer.
Other customers whooped in agreement from various tables, and Davey tipped her hat at them. “Love you guys, too.”
A little too much, maybe.
Normally, a shifter bar would be the last place you’d expect to find a human female bartender/waitress/bookkeeper. Especially considering that it was against shifter law to reveal our existence to a human. Toanyhuman. But Davey had found out about shifters accidentally, and that couldn’t be taken back.
And the truth was that the closer I kept her, the less I worried about her safety among the dense population of male strays in the Mississippi Valley.
Davey brushed by Vance Cooper on her way into the kitchen. Vance was one of six enforcers under my supervision, two of whom also worked as both security and jacks-of-all-trades at the Fat Cat. The other four enforcers lived spread throughout our zone: the western third of Tennessee and the western tip of Kentucky.
“Hey Davey,” Vance said as he held the swinging door for my sister. “You closin’ tonight?”
“Is this a day that ends in Y?” She smiled up at him.Wayup. Vance was six foot five, barefoot, which made him a good thirteen inches taller than my baby sister.
Who—she constantly reminded me—was no longer a baby at all.
The door swung shut behind her, and Vance headed my way. “Hey, boss.”
I really washisboss.
“Hey. You just back from patrol?” I asked as I pulled another beer for Nolan, at his signal from down the bar.
Vance nodded. “All’s well in town.”
“Town” would be Buford, Tennessee, about fifty miles northeast of Memphis, off a largely unkept length of state highway 18. Buford had around four thousand residents, including—unbeknownst to most of them—the largest concentration of shifters in the state. All strays.
All men, except for me.
There was no easy way to get to Buford. But once you found it, if you were willing to drive deeper into Hardeman County, you’d find the Fat Cat Bar and Grille. Though few people were ever willing to drive that far. Few human people, anyway.
Most shifters—even those who lived in town—were used to being out in the boonies. That was where we hunted, both alone and as a community. Where we congregated. It was where many of us lived.
“Doug’s just reported a couple of new scents out in the common run,” I told Vance as he helped himself to a beer from the tap.
He gave me an amused look. “Good work, Doug.” Vance drank from his mug while I stared out at the front room of the bar. There were only a handful of customers this early, most of whom had stopped in for a beer and a burger before working a night shift.
Vance turned to me as Davey came out of the kitchen carrying Doug’s dinner. “Acoupleof scents? Together? Or two separate scents?”
“Good question. Doug?” He’d heard us, of course. It’s difficult to avoid eavesdropping, as a shifter.
“How the hell would I know if they were together?” Doug asked around a juicy bite of his steak. It was perfectly rare and clearly well-seasoned. Billy was really getting good on the grill.
“Were both scents in the same place?” I asked Doug.
